


Five Hundred Yards of Perspective

by beautifultoastdream



Series: Carolina Dreaming [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Character Study, Comfort, Drama, F/M, Feels, Friendship, Gen, Headcanon, Hopeful Ending, Loss, Male-Female Friendship, Memory Loss, One-sided attraction?, Pre-Relationship, Some Humor, Swearing, Unwanted Feelings, dead spouse, friends helping each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 20:28:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29266509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifultoastdream/pseuds/beautifultoastdream
Summary: The courier's muscles remember things her broken brain forgot. Each of her companions watches her habits and movements, and draws their own conclusions about who she used to be. Boone, who has a unique perspective on things, sees more than anyone realizes.One-sided Female Courier/Craig Boone, possible pre-relationship. Characters helping each other sort through complicated feelings and recognizing the marks that life has left on each other.
Relationships: Craig Boone/Female Courier
Series: Carolina Dreaming [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2149269
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	Five Hundred Yards of Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a (short) series of one-shots about my courier, the amnesiac, rule-bound, speak-softly-and-carry-a-broad-machete Carolina. Though her name ended up not appearing in this. Go figure ...
> 
> I'm still getting to grips with character voices, but I really wanted to try a Boone POV. As a sniper and as a recent widower, he would pick up on different signals from the amnesiac courier--even if he didn't say anything about it. 
> 
> The game didn't say much about his background, so I filled in a little bit ... extrapolating from his conversation and his, uh, not great intelligence stat. Compared to book-smart types like Arcade and Veronica, Boone would be a little bit out of his depth, but that doesn't mean he's not sharp in his own way. And a sniper has to be good at watching others.
> 
> Enjoy!

Her brain may not remember, but her body does.

Arcade spins a whole yarn about how he noticed and what it means. He uses lots of Latin, which is surely something to do with medicine but still makes Boone’s trigger finger twitch. _Traumatic encephalopathy:_ the fuck is that? 

Once Arcade is done spewing the hundred-cap words, though, it boils down to just what Boone could’ve told him anyway. The courier’s brain was scrambled by the bullets, but muscle memory is still picking up the slack. 

He’s seen it happen before. Every sniper knows that one guy who got shot in the head and still dragged his ass back to base somehow. Every sniper knows that you make your shot count, because if you fuck up and don’t get a second one, you might end up in someone else’s crosshairs a lot sooner than you think.  Every sniper has a story of an assignment gone wrong, when a guy lost half his skull and was still walking … 

(Though every sniper also knows to take that shit with a grain of salt. What’s the only difference between a fairy tale and a sniper story? The fairy tale starts “Once upon a time” and the sniper story starts “No shit, there I was …”)

If you didn’t know her, you wouldn’t know it. But they all know her, and they can all see it. And they all notice different things.

“ She  was educated,” Arcade says abruptly, one evening around the campfire. The courier is walking the perimeter with Rex, leaving the rest of them behind with gecko steak and warm sarsaparilla. Arcade’s been staring into the fire, as if stuck on a problem. Now he speaks. “ B ut not too much.  You’ve seen the way she writes in old-fashioned looped characters. That’s the way they teach in a o ne-room schoolhouse. She probably  did most of her  other learning on her own.”

Veronica nods at that. She’s often with the courier when they root through the remnants of the old vaults, and more than any of the others, she’s seen the way the courier collects books and magazines. Hungrily.

“Definitely,” she says. “But not science. Her medicine’s OK— “

Arcade makes a skeptical noise at that.

“—Shush, you! It’s OK for, you know, broc flowers and secondhand needles. B ut any time she has to do anything with computers—“

“’Does anyone have a Programmer’s Digest?’” Arcade, Cass, and Raul all  chime in at once.  Boone doesn’t say it, but he thinks it. He can hear the words in his head: a strangely accented voice, a little slurred, as if one side of her mouth doesn’t work quite right, but sharp and pleading nevertheless. She’s out of her depth with anything more complex than a lock.

Boone doesn’t know much about formal education. His schoolhouse wasn’t even one room: it was the family table, a few snatched hours a week in between endless chores.  It was reading and writing, and the kind of basic math you need to keep a ranch running and not get cheated by the traders.  Everything else he learned from the NCR, Carla, the Mojave— and  the Legion.

Arcade and Veronica, though, they have more learning. They can spot the ways the courier’s hands remember that education.  A whole world of tells Boone misses.

Raul sees something, too, though his observation is something from more familiar ground.

“The boss isn’t a gunslinger,” he says one afternoon. 

They’re sheltering in a ruined house, just enough walls and a bit of roof to provide some protection from the murderous Mojave sun. The courier, Lily, and Arcade are on a supply run, delivering stimpacks and preserved food to a nearby refugee camp. Arcade’s  going along to help the wounded; Lily’s  going along to make sure nobody “causes a fuss, pumpkin.”  The rest of them are camping out, making a dent in their collective supplies of purified water and  trying not to die of heatstroke.

Cass is sitting slumped against the wall, her hat over her eyes, when Raul speaks. She laughs and raises the brim just enough to look across at the ghoul.

“No kidding,” she says. “Every time I put a rifle in that gal’s hand, I feel like I oughtta apologize to it.”

Boone silently concurs. The courier is a shitty shot with any kind of long gun.

“You ought to be apologizing to more than that,  amiga ,”  Raul says dryly. “That 10mm of hers sees more mishandling than a blind orgy.”

Cass barks out another laugh and raises her half-empty water bottle in a silent toast. Raul toasts her right back, somehow managing to bow sarcastically from a sitting position. It’s a skill.

Boone concurs with that, too, though blind orgies aren’t his scene.  The courier is a little better with pistols, but she’s never been a natural shot. She ignores jabs from Raul and Cass on the subject, stubbornly citing the Couriers’ Rules—something about not relying on a weapon you have to reload. Which is four-star bullshit in Boone’s opinion, though he’s not gonna be the one to say it.

Still … 

“Better with the machete,” he says. The others look at him, a little surprised: he rarely contributes to their conversations. He’s focusing on stripping a varmint rifle they found in the ruins, taking what parts they can use, but hell, he can work and talk too. “ And up close. Brawling. Must’ve spent time in close quarters.”

Raul and Cass exchange glances, nodding at that.  Neither of them have done time in an official prison—not that they’re admitting, anyway—but  a  longtime prison  brawler looks a lot like the courier does. She backs her enemies into corners, using elbows and knees as much as her machete.  Once (and Boone will stand by this until the day he dies, though every time he tries to say it, it starts off sounding a lot like “No shit, there I was”), he saw her pull a Legionary’s hair. True, it was only to get a better grip so she could hack at the man’s neck, but still. That’s not the work of a trained fighter,  but it is the work of an experienced one.

Of all people, it’s Lily who adds the next piece of the puzzle. A lone, suicidally overconfident Jackal wanders into their camp that evening, interrupting what had been a relaxing dinner of grilled squirrel bits. The courier, who considers unprovoked assault not only annoying but unforgivably  _rude,_ smacks the Jackal with the flat of her machete until he howls and orders him to clean up his act. 

To make sure he can’t hang around and cause them more trouble, the courier takes his shoes. And his pants. He’ll have to spend the night running for reliable cover or risk getting his ass roasted when the sun rises.

“ That’s pumpkin for you,” Lily sighs, watching the one-sided brawl. “ I was just like that with my brothers when I was little. But it was so cramped, you know! Oh, big families are a blessing, but sometimes you do wish you had more elbow room!”

Eyes meet across the campfire. Everyone who’s been thinking  _prison_ is suddenly thinking  _vault,_ and that puts things into a new perspective.

Lily’s mind isn’t all there itself. When she and the courier go out on missions, Boone (guiltily, with the part of him that was taught not to talk shit about women, thanks to his mother and her laser-guided slaps) thinks that the Mojave had better hold onto its ass,  because sanity is gonna be in short fucking supply for a while.  But she, too, has a bad case of traumat ic —traumatic whatever the fuck Arcade said. Bad brain.  Busted up inside.  She tries to pet friendly strays and ends up givin’ em concussions with her ham-hock hands.  Maybe like recognizes like.

The others saw close-quarters brawling and thought of prison. Maybe they should’ve been thinking of vaults or of big families. And if it’s a big family, that’s another piece of the puzzle, ‘cause anyone who’s dealt with younger brothers or sisters develops that bossy don’t-you-say-that attitude that the courier uses to tell Powder Gangers and Legionaries that they’ve been  _rude._

Slowly, piece by piece, they  start putting the courier back together.

Raul gives up on trying to teach her to be a gunslinger. Boone sees him reading a “Tales of Chivalrie” one day, studying a picture of a heroic musketeer, and he can almost see the ghoul thinking  _Close enough._ With sarcasm and much put-upon attitude, he fixes the courier’s blades and suggests improvements for reach and power. 

Arcade and Veronica collect books for her, watching carefully to see what she responds to. “Programmer’s Digest” is a stopgap, but its lessons never seem to stick. Arcade has better luck when he finally turns up a copy of “The Big Book of Science.”  Boone hears them talking afterwards, something about electrons. Whatever those are.

Cass and Lily, who have no sense of personal space or concept of quiet, crowd into the courier’s space and stay there. They tease her, laugh with her, drink with her (only water for Lily, since Leo is not invited to join the fun), and  Cass dares to throw an occasional elbow. The courier laughs, and the two women wrestle briefly, swinging wild punches and scuffling in the dirt. 

Through it all, Boone keeps his peace. He watches the courier’s six and says little. The others rarely expect him to speak; though they don’t know as much of his story as the courier does,  they know that he doesn’t like to talk and isn’t looking to make friends. Dunno if they like him, but they trust him, and that’s what counts.

So he watches, and he learns, and he sees what the courier’s body remembers. Even if her mind has forgotten it.

She’s married.

Maybe not officially. Mojave marriages don’t always have the paper from a judge or a holy man saying as such. Anyway, her hands are so scarred and tanned that it’d be impossible to spot the marks where a ring was—if she or her man (and he knows it was a man, he’s seen how she looks at some men when she thinks they’re not looking) had the caps for it, anyway.

But there’s a man. Or there was. 

She sleeps with her back to the wall. Sure, he does that too. Lots of folks do. Protection. But when a wall isn’t available, she puts her back to her own pack, or to a wadded blanket. Once, camping out in yet another burned-out house, he sees her settle onto a couch with a sigh of relief. Turning on her side, fitting herself into the angle where the seat meets the back.  Seeking comfort. Accustomed to a body lying beside her.

Carla did the same. Couldn’t sleep unless he was there beside her. God, she hated it when he was working nights … 

The courier doesn’t remember  her man . But her body does. Next morning, she wakes happier than any of ‘em have ever seen her,  well-rested and cheerful. She makes breakfast for all of them (nightstalker eggs with Cram) and looks confused when there’s one portion extra that can’t be accounted for.

When they camp in the desert, out on the flats, she’s miserable. She’s scooting sideways in her bedroll, pack at her back, trying to make a ruck full of armor and weapons do the work of a husband. In the morning, there’s dark circles under her eyes and a track in the sand where she squirmed herself out of her original spot. 

Boone takes a lot of night watches. He’s still wired for it, thanks to Novac, and he likes the quiet.  He keeps an eye on all of them and grabs his own shut-eye in the small hours of the morning.

Coming down from his perch  atop a ruined trailer, one night  around midnight, he sees the courier. She’s snugged into a little hollow in the hill, but that’s not what catches his attention. 

She’s hugging the damn ruck. Arms around it. One leg drawn up, the side of her knee resting on the worn canvas. Like she can’t bear it let it go.

A line of thigh, white in the moonlight. 

Heat, sudden and intense, arrows through Boone’s body. 

He can see the scene plainly in his mind’s eye: the courier at rest. A woman in bed with her man. Her leg thrown over his, her head resting on his shoulder. One hand on his chest, perhaps touching dog tags lying in the hollow of his throat. Softly entwined in the night, gentle breathing. 

And in the morning, she’ll wake with him cradled between her legs, and smile that crooked little smile. He’ll jolt out of dreams—bad ones, quickly forgotten—to find his wife there, one wind-roughened hand rubbing circles into his chest. He’s already half-hard (still young enough for that, dammit) and waking to a willing, loving woman, her sunbleached hair spilling over the pillow they share. Her head thrown back, spine arching, as he  sinks into her—

_Harder, Craig!_

He doesn’t stumble back, because he’s better trained than that. He flattens his back against the cold  steel of  the trailer  and takes deep breaths. 

_Control yourself,_ he snaps inside his head. Slowly, reluctantly, his mind and his dick begin to listen. Deep breaths. Close his eyes, just for a second, and the rush of shame obliterates what’s left of the heat.

Carla had red hair.  Not blonde.

For a raw moment, he hates the courier.  Hates her for replacing, even for just a second, the woman he loved and lost. For making him see blonde instead of red. For bringing back impulses he thought he’d killed with whiskey and stims.

But he can’t.

He picks his way down the slope towards the sleeping figures. Nobody else seems to be imitating the courier’s habits: Arcade is splayed out like a corpse, Veronica is curled up into a ball and has her hood on inside her sleeping bag, Cass is sleeping half sitting up with her shotgun in her lap like the experienced caravan guard she is. Raul and Lily don’t so much sleep as fall comatose, and Rex is curled up like a cat at Lily’s feet. Nightkin run warm.

Boone tends to drop his bedroll a little further from the others. His pack is sitting beside it, neatly closed. Everything stowed away in preparation for a quick deployment. Or getaway.

He moves his bedroll closer to the courier and drops his ruck between them, just touching the balled-up courier’s back. Then he goes to wake Raul for the next watch.

When he comes back, the courier has unknotted slightly. She’s still asleep, but with something in her arms and at her back, her strained look softens. She lets out a soft breath.

Gonna be fuckin’ freezing when the dawn chill comes. Boone gently pulls up the edge of her unzipped bedroll, hiding that bare leg from the cold. And prying eyes.

The courier’s brain doesn’t remember. Her body does. She seeks comfort she doesn’t know she needs, and can’t understand what she’s missing when she can’t find it.  So desperate for it that she hugs her pack at night, seeking that contact her body remembers but her  mind forgot .

So he takes to dropping his bedroll near hers and putting his pack between the two of them. Without realizing it, she  begins adding her pack to his, making a solid man-sized wall between their bedrolls. She squirms back into it at night and breathes deeply, once, before drifting off.

The others guess at pieces of her. This piece, Boone keeps to himself. Maybe the rest have a hint or two, but they don’t need to know that shit. This doesn’t concern them. 

He wonders, sometimes, if the courier’s man knows she’s still alive.

If he does, that fucker had better be looking for her. 


End file.
